


words full of holes

by coloredink



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Language Barrier, Languages and Linguistics, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 23:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: "Yuri Katsuki!  I've come all the way to Japan to be your coach!" turned out to be the pinnacle of Victor Nikiforov's Japanese.





	words full of holes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dasmondschaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasmondschaf/gifts).



> Much gratitude to vi0lentquiche for the Russian help; the Japanese was run through Google Translate, so I'm sure there are unforgivable errors. XD;;

"Yuri Katsuki! I've come all the way to Japan to be your coach!" turned out to be the pinnacle of Victor Nikiforov's Japanese. He grinned blankly at Yuri's stammered retorts and repeated the phrase in exactly the same tone and cadence he had before, like someone who had, perhaps, rehearsed it on an airplane flight from St. Petersburg to Kyoto and subsequent train journey to Hasetsu.

Fortunately, Yuri's English was more than up to the task--perhaps better than Victor's, who hadn't had the benefit of four years of immersion. But it was certainly better than Victor's Japanese, which was limited to the sort of tourist phrases one got out of a book: "Please," "thank you," "how much?" and "Where is Yuri Katsuki?"

But it seemed only fair that Yuri learn a little Russian, since Victor had gone through all the trouble of learning Japanese, and so he went to Minako. Minako was the smartest person Yuri knew, and she had traveled around the world several times. She'd even lived in Russia.

"Twenty years ago!" Minako all but yelled at him. "If you want to learn Russian, why not ask Victor?" One look at Yuri's furious blushing face and she sighed and caved. "I can practice with you, but you're better off learning on your own. You can probably download an app. I'll help you pay for it, if you want."

So Yuri downloaded an app, and also some of the more old-fashioned audio tapes that he could listen to while running. He was spending a lot of time running these days, since Victor wouldn't let him back on the ice until he dropped some weight. "Hello, my name is Yuri," he muttered as he ran along the beach. "Hello, my name is Yuri," he chanted, in time with the rolling waves. "I don't speak very much Russian."

\-----

Never before had Victor been allowed to eat from the breakfast buffet. Well, no, of course he had been _allowed_ , but as an athlete he had been restricted to certain foods: whole grains, low-fat yogurt, eggs. Here he could eat whatever he wanted, and he didn't recognize half of the breakfast menu. It turned breakfast into an adventure.

"卵," Victor said, picking up a hardboiled egg with his fingers.

"Egg," Yuri confirmed.

"Rice. Dumpling. Miso soup," Victor went on as he took a bit of everything and put it on his tray. "What's this one?" he asked of the pickles.

"漬物," Yuri told him.

"漬物," Victor repeated. "Your mother and father are very good cooks. No wonder you got fat."

Yuri coughed. Victor noted approvingly that Yuri had only taken miso soup, some grilled fish and pickles, and a very small mound of rice for his breakfast. "I eat when I'm stressed," Yuri said.

"Stressed?" Victor pondered this word. "No reason to stressed, now that I'm here," he decided.

"Erm." Yuri looked like he wanted to say something, but he kept his mouth shut. He took his tray of food to one of the low tables. Victor followed him.

"Yuri!" Victor pitched his voice the way he usually did to get something he wanted from Yakov. Yuri was at least as tough to crack as Yakov. "Tell me something."

"What do you want me to tell you?" Yuri asked, lifting his bowl of soup to his lips.

"Tell me how you feel about me," Victor suggested.

Yuri sputtered on his soup and coughed again. Maybe he had some kind of problem with his lungs?

"I want to know!" Victor went on. Yuri had said that Victor was his idol, that he'd admired Victor ever since he was a child. But that was at the banquet. Yuri hadn't brought up the banquet yet; maybe he was embarrassed. Fine, Victor wouldn't bring it up either.

"How I feel about you?" Yuri wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes darting around the room. He always seemed worried about what other people thought of his words. As if that was even a concern here, when they were speaking English and everyone else in the room was deep in their own Japanese conversations.

"Do you feel stressed about me?" Victor prompted.

Yuri looked startled at that. "No," he said at last. "I'm very happy you're here."

Victor grinned. "I'm happy to be here with you, Yuri."

Yuri smiled back. Victor had a lot of other questions he wanted to ask Yuri, like why he hadn't called Victor after the banquet, or why he'd performed so badly last year when he was clearly capable of so much more, why he'd memorized Victor's routine to Stammi Vicino. But Yuri had gone back to eating, and getting him to answer questions was worse than clipping Makkachin's nails.

Maybe, Victor thought, he needed to ask them in a different language. He would ask that ballet teacher about it later, the one who spoke such good English.

\-----

Yuri dropped the audio tapes after Yu-topia. He wasn't spending as much time running, and he could hardly listen to them while spinning on the ice. That left him with the app, which he diligently poked in bed each night before closing his eyes. Yuri couldn't remember ever sleeping that well. His days in Detroit had been equally grueling, but then he'd been far from home, far from his dog, eating terrible cafeteria food while trying to overcome culture shock and learning a new language. This was a good, clean exhaustion, like his bones were being hollowed out and filled up again, stronger.

"Oh, you're learning Russian?" said Phichit. He grinned at Yuri in a way that never failed to make him check for the nearest available exits, even in his own bedroom at home. "What do you want to tell him?"

"Nothing, really," said Yuri. "It's just, he's my coach, and he came all this way, I should learn to speak his language."

"Are you sure?" Phichit said. "Maybe you want to tell him, 'Victor, you're my idol. Victor, come look at all the posters of you I have in my room."

"No!" Yuri squeaked in outrage while Phichit's giggle crackled through his computer speakers, but he couldn't help smiling too. God, it was good to have friends.

"Shouldn't Victor learn Japanese too?" asked Phichit.

"He did," said Yuri. "A little." He smiled at the memory of a sleepy, jet-lagged Victor fumbling his way through a breakfast order to Yuri's mother, that first morning. Since then, he'd learned the names of all of his favorite foods, how to greet people formally and informally by time of day, to talk about the weather, and even how to bow.

Phichit's eyes widened. "Oh, he did?" That catlike grin curled the edges of his lips. "I wonder what he wants to tell you."

\-----

Summer crept in while Victor wasn't paying attention, sticky and humid and filled with the ceaseless drone of cicadas. (What a noise they made!) Victor had never spent a summer abroad before. It hadn't occurred to him that summer could happen without white nights or scarlet sails.

Yuri maybe noticed how often Victor was at the beach, listening to the seagulls wheel and cry, because one day at the rink he asked, "Victor, do you miss Russia?"

"Hmm?" Victor said, not because he hadn't heard and understood Yuri perfectly well but because he was stalling for time.

"Do you miss Russia? St. Petersburg."

What was there to miss about Piter? Piter was a tastefully decorated loft that Victor only went back to sleep in; Piter was streets he'd never walked down and restaurants with food he'd never tasted; Piter was some dog walker who spent more time with Makkachin than Victor did and got rich off the fact that Victor was never home. Here he could eat pork cutlet bowls and shaved ice and go to the beach every day and watch Makkachin get sand in her fur.

He didn't say any of that. He said the next thing that came to mind instead, which was, "Yuri, could you skate the Stammi Vicino again?"

Yuri somehow managed to stumble while standing perfectly still on the ice. "Huh?!"

"I want to see it," Victor went on, even while he knew, logically, that they should be practicing Yuri's new free program, and that there was no point in asking Yuri to exhaust himself skating a difficult routine that he would never perform again. Well, there was no guarantee that he would _never_ perform it again, right? And Yuri needed practice with his jumps, and he had stamina, and this was guaranteed to make him stop asking questions about Russia.

"Er, I could try to remember it," Yuri said, because he was always earnest and willing to try, and that was one of the many things Victor found endearing about him.

"I can play the music," Victor said. "I think I have it on my phone."

He did have it on his phone, and he plugged it into the portable speakers. Yuri skated to the center of the rink and held the initial pose while Victor got the music queued up. And then he skated.

This had been a mistake, Victor realized after about thirty seconds. Watching this in person was nothing like watching a video capture, and Yuri was in better form now than he'd been when that video had been made. Victor watched Yuri skating the way Stammi Vicino _should_ have been skated, with a sort of heartbreak and longing, and tried to keep his mind focused on the technique. He'd thought only Russians understood this kind of passion.

It ended too quickly. Yuri held the final pose for a moment, panting, before skating wearily toward the wall. He hadn't flubbed a single one of the jumps. Yuri skated well when he wasn't under pressure. Victor's phone went automatically to the next song, which was last year's EuroVision winner, and Victor fumbled to turn it off and unplug the speakers.

"So?" Yuri asked, leaning against the wall. "How was it?"

"Your arms flap like a chicken," Victor said. Yuri's lips firmed, but he didn't deflate. Victor added, "But it was good. We should skate it together sometime."

\-----

It didn't occur to Yuri until later--much later--that Victor would have been watching that speech too. All of Hasetsu would have been watching: Mom, Dad, Sis, Minako, all crowded around the television at the inn while Yuri declared his intentions to the reporters. Yuri hadn't been thinking about that; he'd been thinking about the rest of the world.

 _As usual_ , Yuri thought glumly as he stumped toward the exit gates. _Thinking about myself and what strangers are thinking, not about the people who already care--_

"Yuri!" bellowed a familiar voice, and Yuri found himself enveloped in a hug right outside of the fare gates.

"Wan wan!" barked Makkachin from around Yuri's thighs.

"Hey, I'm here too!" Minako yelled from somewhere nearby; Yuri couldn't really see past Victor's coat.

Victor let go of him. "I didn't listen to your words because your tie was too ugly," he said without the slightest trace of apology. "So we should burn your tie right away."

"What?" Yuri said, shocked not by just the content of Victor's words but by the fact that they'd been delivered in Japanese.

"Yeah, I coached him through that on the way here," Minako said, and she did sound grudgingly apologetic. "He wanted to be sure you understood."

"What's wrong with my tie?" Yuri allowed himself to be towed by the arm out of the station. People were staring, but they were always staring; Victor attracted a lot of attention.

"I don't really know," Minako said, at the same time as Victor bellowed, "Ugly!!!" "You know, his Japanese is really improving," Minako remarked, and Yuri remembered to panic again.

There was a party waiting for him back at the inn of course, and so Yuri didn't get a chance to ask Victor about it until much later, close to bedtime. Well, "ask" wasn't really it; Yuri was hoping that it wouldn't come up at all, but Victor of course ambushed Yuri in the hallway. "You said love, on the television."

"Y-yes," Yuri stammered.

"Hmmmm." Victor looked at Yuri consideringly. Yuri considered tearing through the wall. Or, if he got any sweatier, he would dissolve. "Love is very strong."

"Y...es…?"

Victor nodded. "You're strong. Strong enough to keep me."

"What?" Yuri said.

"Now, let's sleep together!" said Victor.

"What--no!"

\-----

"なぜこれは私の仕事ですか?" Yuri was muttering.

This was fun! Victor was having fun! He'd never been able to drink, or eat raw seafood, or--well, anything fun, really, the night before a competition. He hadn't thought he'd been missing out, because what was better than winning? But he'd totally been missing out! Was this what it was like to be a normal 27-year-old? Maybe Victor should give up skating forever. Coaching was pretty great!

He wasn't sure where his shirt had gone. He remembered feeling hot, earlier, probably because of the alcohol. Chinese alcohol had nothing on Russian alcohol, but boy did they know their food. Maybe Yuri knew where his shirt was. Yuri was walking next to him, with Victor's arm around his shoulder like Victor needed help walking. Victor could walk perfectly fine on his own. He was Russian; Russians were naturally good at holding their liquor.

"Yuri, do you know where my shirt is?" he asked.

Yuri didn't reply.

"Yuri, how come you never drink?" Victor whined. "I want to see your drunk face again."

"I don't speak Russian," Yuri informed him.

Victor stopped in his tracks, which seemed to force Yuri to halt too. Yuri tugged at Victor's arm, but Victor was thinking. Also, the hallway was tilting. He was reasonably certain that Yuri had just told him that he didn't speak Russian. In Russian. That didn't make any sense.

"Yuri! Do you know Russian?!" Victor demanded.

Yuri looked taken aback. "Ah, no--"

"You've been holding out on me!" Victor said. Why was Yuri flinching like that? "All this time I've been trying to learn Japanese, and it turns out you knew Russian the whole time!"

"I don't speak Russian!" Yuri yelled.

"Oh." Victor blinked. He swayed on his feet. He was a little cold, without his shirt.

"Goodnight, Victor," Yuri said, trying to prod Victor to move. He was still speaking Russian.

"Okay," Victor said, and he slid gently to the floor.

\-----

Yuri went back up to their room after the competition, filled with the spirit of peace and serenity. He was tired from the skate; also tired from crying; also tired from all the _emotions_. And so he was wholly unprepared when Victor went into the bathroom, shut the door behind him, and flung the door open again a minute later to yell, a crazed gleam in his eye, "Ты знаешь русский!"

"Um, a little," Yuri replied; he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at his phone, but now he put it face-down beside him.

"Ты все это время знал русский?!" Victor demanded. Well, it sounded like a demand.

"What? No?" Yuri switched to English. "I've been learning on my phone." He picked up his phone again and tapped the app. He showed the screen to Victor. Victor took the phone and sat down next to him on the bed. He had a strange expression on his face. Yuri hadn't expected Victor to be _angry_ about Yuri learning Russian, although granted a lot of things sounded angry in Russian that weren't actually. Did Victor think Yuri was insulting his English? Or insulting in general for butchering his mother tongue? Or--

Victor started laughing.

"What?" Yuri said, and then switched to Russian to repeat it: "What?"

Victor paused and frowned a little, and finally said, with terrible pronunciation, "I'm learning Japanese. Um. From the phone? Minako teaches me."

Yuri gaped at Victor, although he didn't know why he was so shocked. He _knew_ Victor had been learning Japanese; after all, it hadn't been that long ago that he'd been teaching Victor the words for his favorite foods, or all the terms associated with the Obon festival. He even knew that sometimes Minako coached Victor through phrases. He'd thought it'd been incidental, a matter of vocabulary, not something systematic. Not something _serious_. Yuri was suddenly, outrageously jealous that Victor had been keeping this secret from him.

"Minako wouldn't teach me," Yuri muttered, finally.

"Her Russian is terrible," Victor said cheerfully. "But we should just practice with each other." He leaned into Yuri suddenly, touching Yuri's forehead with his. "We've been stupid," he added, using the Japanese word for "stupid." Yuri laughed, thinking that was probably one of the first words that Minako had taught him, and Victor laughed too. Yuri could feel Victor's breath against his face.

Yuri's breath caught, suddenly certain that Victor was about to kiss him again. But Victor pulled away. Yuri had learned in America that kissing in public was something far less scandalous to Americans than to Japanese. Meanwhile, Europeans kissed each other as a way of saying hello or goodbye, but Americans thought that was weird. Yuri didn't know where Russians fell on the spectrum.

"I don't think I'm a very good coach," Victor said. He held up a hand, before Yuri could protest. "I'm stupid. I say the wrong things sometimes. I don't know what your heart needs. But you believe in me as your coach anyway. Yes?"

"Yes," Yuri said, without hesitation.

"Then we'll talk to each other. In English, in Russian, in Japanese. Yes?"

"Yes," Yuri said, and he couldn't control the smile that broke across his face.

\-----

"Lift your head!" Victor called across the ice. "Don't skate with your head down like you've already lost!"

Where were these words coming from? It was like hearing Yakov or Lilia on the ice. But they were coming from Victor. What a difference it made, coaching in Russian! It was like the fog had cleared from his mind. He wasn't a bad coach, or perhaps, Yuri was such a good student that it made no difference whether or not Victor was a bad coach.

"Keep your leg straight on the sit-spin!"

"Open up your form; you look cramped!"

"あなたは私があなたが言っていることの三分の一について理解しているのを知っていますよね?" Yuri yelled back at one point.

"What?"

"私はあなたが言っていることの三分の一について理解しています," Yuri repeated, slower, enunciating every word as if that made a difference when Victor had no idea what the words meant.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand Japanese!" Victor bellowed.

Yuri skated toward Victor at that, looking outraged. "あなたは私がアプリで練習している間にミナコと練習していましたが、何かを理解していないと教えてください."

Victor recognized Minako's name, so this was something to do with Japanese lessons or speaking Japanese, probably. That or Yuri thought Victor and Minako were having a clandestine love affair. "Should I speak slower?"

Yuri threw up his hands. "Yes," he said in Russian. "Please speak more slowly."

"Okay," said Victor. "Now, skate like you're the most beautiful thing on the ice! Because you are; there is no competition."

\-----

Tasting the fried pork cutlet inside the pirozhki, the familiar flavors of home in this land so far away, without Victor but with Yurio beside--Yuri felt tears well in his eyes. He blinked furiously and willed them to go away rather than spill over.

Yurio recoiled. "Ты что, _плачешь_? О боже, пигги, не будь таким противным."

"It's really good," Yuri sniffled. "Thank you." He scrubbed his eyes with the fist not holding the pirozhki.

"You speak Russian now?!" Yurio squawked.

"Just a little bit," Yuri said. He took another bite and wondered if he was supposed to be eating this. He hadn't won, after all. Yuri swallowed past the lump in his throat and kept going.

"Well, it's not bad," Yurio said grudgingly. Yuri thought that was generous; his Russian was probably on par with Yurio's English, which was execrable. It also didn't escape his notice that Yurio had started speaking a little slower and more clearly.

Yuri chewed his pirozhki contemplatively. "Yakov is kind of scary, isn't he?"

"Scary? Huh? What do you mean?"

"Does he ever say anything nice? Or hug you?"

Yurio shrank away. "What's with you and the hugging? Do you have some kind of фетиш? I don't want to know what you and Victor… чем вы там занимаетесь. Ugh!"

Yuri hadn't been able to follow all that, but the sentiment was clear enough. He laughed, and Yurio looked like a cat that had just had its tail tugged, and the pirozhki really was delicious, and for just a moment, in another country far away from his family and the people he loved, everything felt okay.

\-----

Victor drove them home from the airport. Yuri was evidently too tired to express his dismay; honestly, forget _once_ that the Japanese drove on the left side of the road and they never let you forget it.

"You watched, didn't you?" Yuri mumbled drowsily. "I'm sorry."

"Why sorry?" Also, people in Japan drove much better than people in Russia. It was almost a sedative experience.

"I let you down."

Victor laughed. "Yuri, you have never disappointed me." No, that wasn't quite true; Victor could think of a few times that Yuri had disappointed him. But Yuri never ceased to _surprise_ him, even when he was being disappointing, and that was the important part. Victor thought all the surprise had gone out of his life, and then along had come this young Japanese man who perfectly executed Victor's routines, secretly learned Russian, introduced him to pork cutlet bowls, and asked Victor to coach him indefinitely. It turned out the future was not a foregone conclusion.

He wanted to kiss Yuri again.

"No, tell me the truth," Yuri protested. "We promised to talk to each other, didn't we? What was it like watching me on TV?"

Victor ran his tongue around his teeth and switched to Russian. Yuri wouldn't be able to understand all of it, but his Russian had been improving along the same lines as his skating, and Victor was confident Yuri would get the gist. "It was frustrating, watching you from so far away. The first time, when I saw you in that video, I wanted to run to Japan to coach you, to see you skate in person. That was what this was like. I wanted to run to Russia and cheer you on when you did well, and embrace you afterward to assure you that you're not weak like you always fear you are. I think Yakov's hugs are probably not as good."

Yuri gave a rusty little laugh. "No, his hug is very stiff."

"I wish I'd been there," Victor said, a little desperately.

"Me too," Yuri said. "I want you to be there every time I compete, and hug me before and afterward."

\-----

"Hey," said Yuri when he came out of the bathroom. He'd spent a not insignificant amount of his shower going over all the oddities and foibles of the day, as he usually did. Victor was lying on the bed, doing something on the phone. "Why did you say that, earlier? About us getting married after I won a gold medal?"

Victor didn't even look up from his phone. "It was a joke."

"Was it?" Yuri sat down on the bed next to Victor.

"You were getting flustered. I knew it would distract them."

It had; even Phichit had gotten serious. And then JJ, of all people, had salvaged the mood. "You like seeing me flustered," Yuri said. "You think it's cute."

"It is," Victor agreed. He did look up then, to smile at Yuri. "But not right before a competition. You need to be cool."

Yuri never felt cool, but Victor's Japanese wasn't that great yet. He studied the ring on his finger. This wasn't the first time Victor had talked about marriage. When Yuri had asked Victor to be his coach until he retired, Victor had compared it to a marriage proposal. "Victor, do you want to get married?"

"Someday," Victor said breezily. He leaned back on his hands. "Doesn't every man want to get married?"

"I mean." Yuri twisted the ring. He didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, not even in Japanese. "I don't understand," he said at last. "We're not lovers."

"Don't worry about it, Yuri," Victor said. "It'll keep until after the competition."

\-----

"I can't tell you," Victor said, afterward, on the beach in Barcelona, "how much it scared me that you might really retire."

"Scared?" said Yuri. "I thought you were angry."

"I was! I was angry that you would make that decision for me. Because you thought it was the good decision for me. I make my own decisions, Yuri."

"I'm sorry," Yuri said, after a brief pause.

Victor reached out and took Yuri's hand. "I was scared that you would leave me on the ice alone."

"Alone?" Yuri said.

"I've always been on the ice alone," said Victor. "And I thought that was good, that I was free. But it's lonely, isn't it, being free?"

"Mmm." Yuri's fingers tightened around Victor's. "Hey. About us getting married when I win a gold medal."

Victor laughed. "It was a joke."

"Was it really?"

Yuri turned to look at Victor. Victor felt pinned, like the breath had been knocked out of him when he fell during a quadruple flip. Yuri had that effect on him.

"It takes two to get married," Victor said, gently and softly. He didn't talk like this about skating: when it came to skating, Victor was hard and brusque. He didn't know how to be gentle. "That's your decision. Mine has been made."

Yuri brought Victor's hand up to his lips and kissed his knuckles. It was, he thought, a very Victor-ish sort of gesture. "I'll win one next time. I won't make you wait."

Victor sucked in a breath, and yet his next words sounded quite breathless. "All right. In that case, I think you'd better come live with me."

\---end---


End file.
